


gotta let it show

by collieflower



Series: I Want The World To Know [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Coming Out, Dealing With Bad Press, Eddie Lost His Arm, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, for the very early 2000's, mentioned Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 15:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21394093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collieflower/pseuds/collieflower
Summary: Richie Tozier@trashmouthHeterosexuals may own all of my old comedy but from here on out it’s for the gays.Or: Twitter assumes the worst, cancel culture is severely flawed, and Richard Tozier comes out. The Losers are always there to support each other, no matter what.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: I Want The World To Know [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542349
Comments: 4
Kudos: 357





	gotta let it show

**Author's Note:**

> if there are people with those twitter handles, im sorry and also these are not based off of them.
> 
> hey!! i started writing this three hours ago and then i realized _oh shit_, i think this is in the same universe as my hanbrough fic, coming out of my cage. You don't have to read that one to understand this one, but there's a couple of cute refs that you'll pick up on if you read both!!

> **chrissty  
@vicnightgown**
> 
> So are we just going to fucking ignore that @**trashmouth** was involved in a homophobic hate crime in 2005 or what?? Y’all really gonna look past anything these days, huh? [snooze emoji]
> 
> * * *
> 
> **T**  
**@****nichepapa**   
In reply to **@****vicnightgown**
> 
> sorry what the FUCK??!! why hasn’t this blown tf up?!!?

* * *

All things concerning, it was a pretty beautiful day. Bev was down for the weekend, and they were walking closely down the sidewalk together, coffees in-hand, half of Bev’s shopping bags hooked over Richie’s arm.

“I’m thinking of moving down here.” Bev swatted a fly away from her hair and adjusted her sunglasses.

“Oh yeah? Sick of ol’ glamorous New York?” he teased, elbowing her arm.

She shook her head at him. “Well, Mike is travelling.”

“Regular nomad right now.”

“Mhm. Bill’s got him anchored down somewhere, I’m sure.” She sipped her coffee. “And you and Eddie are living here.” She gestured ahead of them, like he and Eds started shacking up on the corner between the Chipotle and the little skater shop. “Plus, Bill isn’t too far away.”

Bill made a sour noise. “Now, I disagree. He’s off in la-la land over in LA, and that’s _ hours _ away.”

She shot him a look over the rims of her glasses. “It’s literally less than an hour to him.”

“Yeah, on a good traffic day. Do you know how rare those are?” He rolled his eyes and slurped his coffee until an obnoxious sucking sound floated between them.

“_So_,” she went on pointedly, “Ben has a nice house in Nebraska. But he’s in and out a lot.”

Richie hummed. “Yeah, see, you went off and married a _ working _ man. He’s respectable and busy with a corporate job. It’s we creative fucks that get to live free spirited and wherever we want to plant our asses.”

“His job is creative too,” she argued. He just rolled a shoulder in a shrug. “Takes lots of brains and creativity to design all those beautiful buildings.”

He slung an arm around her shoulders, ice crackling as he jostled his cup. “Okay, Bevvie, we get it, you caught the smart one. I’m with the dull, boring one who doesn’t like my comedy or my socks.” He said this with a low, drawling Voice that was crisp at the edges and soggy in the middle. He imagined the owner of that Voice wore smoking robes and had a mousy goatee. He probably only dressed in reds and blacks. Maybe royal purple on the extra dramatic days.

“Beep beep, Rich!” she laughed. She shoved him, but he had too good of a grip around her shoulders to separate them. They ended up stumbling a few feet before regaining their balance. They fell back into step with each other like it was nothing. That very fact alone was very telling to Richie in his wise old age. It was amazing how they all clicked back together, even after everything. The Losers were like one of Stan’s old puzzles. Everyone had their place, and each fitted along each other, snug and right.

The two of them walked like that for another block or so before a young man caught up with them. He was tall and gangly. The ends of his jeans were cuffed, and he wore an unfortunate sort of hat over a mess of curls spilling over his ears.

“Hi, Rich Tozier?” he asked, out of breath. He’d run across the street in his hurry, but Richie hadn’t paid much attention to him until now. He pulled somewhat away from Bev to look at the young man, taking in his face.

“Yeah, what’s up man? Want a picture?” Richie slipped into his _ Trashmouth_ voice almost seamlessly. It was a routine by now. There was a certain persona that he put on with his fans and when he got up on stage. Something that ran along the lines of Richie, but was also distinctly just _ Rich_.

The young man shook his head. “No, sorry, uh.” It was then Richie saw the phone in his hands, held between them like a microphone. “My name is Aaron Warner, I’m a reporter. Star En.”

“Oh,” Richie’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “Look, sorry man, I don’t have much to—”

Warner cut him off with a brisk, “It’ll only take a second, I promise.” He regained his breath and some chutzpah to spare, it seemed. “I just want to know if you can give me a comment on what you think about all this stuff resurfacing from your past. Do you think it’s unfair, people digging up old stories from twelve years ago? I mean, that’s over a decade, that’s a long time for a person to reflect on their actions and begin to change and better themselves.” He barely took a breath before he went on. “Also, do you think it’s important in today’s climate that people be held accountable for their biggoted actions, even if they were misinformed?”

Richie couldn’t help that _ “What?” _ that spilled out of his mouth. “What the fuck are you talking about, man?” he squawked.

The young man blinked at him. “On Twitter,” he said, gesturing a little with his phone. “There’s a lot of people angry and calling for your head on there recently.”

Richie frowned. “I haven’t been on Twitter.”

The man’s mouth dropped open and then shut with a snap.

“What have they been saying?” Bev piped up. Her brow was furrowed behind her sunglasses, which she pulled up on top of her head.

The kid muttered a curse. “Beverly Marsh, uh… uhm.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head out thoroughly. “Right. There’s been allegations about you being involved with a hate crime back in 2005.”

Richie let his arm drop from Bev’s shoulders. The noise his coffee made was grating to his ears.

“What kind of hate crime?!” Bev demanded, her voice pitching louder.

“Uh, I’ve heard that it involved two gay men getting attacked and thrown out of a nightclub in San Fransico,” Warner told her. “There’s police reports someone dug up within the past couple of days.” He licked his lips and swallowed. “People are mad that Mr. Tozier is involved.”

Richie smiled. It was an awful, sardonic type of smile that was dry and all but cracked around the edges. “Is that what people call it these days?” he asked tiredly. He shifted his coffee to the opposite hand and rubbed at his jaw.

The Warner kid frowned at him. “What, a hate crime?”

“No,” Richie copied his tone, higher and chock full of disbelief, “_i__nvolvement._”

“What else would it be?” Warner quizzed. The phone was brought up a little as if to catch every fucking _ breath _ Richie took, let alone his words.

Bev stepped forward, putting herself between Richie and Warner. “Okay,” she said. Her sunglasses were back down. “Richie isn’t going to say anything until he speaks to his public relations manager. Please excuse us and have a nice day.” She hook Richie’s arm and led him down the sidewalk.

The kid didn’t try to follow them.

The walk back to the car wasn’t a long one, and the drive back to Richie’s house was even shorter.

“So are you gonna tell me about it?” Bev asked, following him in through the garage with bags lining her arms. Richie unlocked the door and let her step through first. There was a skittering upstairs, and any second now, Stan was going to run down the stairs and attack them.

Speaking of, it was almost time for Stan to eat. He went to the cabinet to fish out Stan’s food bowl.

Bev put her things on the island bar that was all but never used. Richie didn’t cook, and neither did Eddie. The only people they ever entertained were the Losers, so there wasn’t much need to impress.

“What’s to tell?” Richie asked with a shrug. “I don’t see anything to tell?”

The sound she made was half-way between a doubtful hum and a disapproving growl from some she-goblin crossed over from another world. He popped his head out of the cabinet to find her scrolling through her phone with a pointed focus. “When you search _ RichieTozier _ on Twitter there’s just a slew of people wanting you in the stocks.”

“So medieval,” he snorted. “Like, find a better torture method, huh? I feel like we could do _ so _ much better nowadays. At least fucking waerboard me—”

“Beep beep, Richie.”

“_Look_.” his sigh was interrupted by paws on hardwood floor, and a poodle with corkscrew curls bounded into the kitchen. “Staniel, you beautiful fucking boy, come here.” He bent to scratch behind Stan’s ears and kiss the top of his head. Just as quick as he came, Stan scurried away from Richie and went to nose at Bev’s thigh.

She scratched behind Stan’s ears, and Richie thought he _ almost _ had a chance, but she glared at him over the counter and he knew he was done.

He huffed a longsuffering breath. “It was ‘05. Me and this guy I was dating were out at this nightclub this one night, and we got jumped.” He put Stan’s bowl on the floor and returned to the cabinet to scoop out his dry food. “They busted his eye and broke two of my ribs.”

Bev was quiet, sobered up by his casual tone. Her fingers were curled over the edge of the counter. “Did you go to the police?”

“Sure. They believed us over the owner of the nightclub, who claimed we were causing this huge disturbance. The assholes got put in jail and it was happily fucking ever after!”

“Richie…”

“What? What do you want me to say, Bev?” He dumped Stan’s food into his bowl, and the poodle all but launched across the floor to get to it. Richie’s shoulders were corded with tension, like an old rubber band ready to snap and crumble. “We were a couple of fags who got the shit beat out of us just because we looked _ gay _, okay? Nobody was gonna fucking stick up for us, be realistic.”

He gave an ugly scoff, and Bev looked down to the counter, and then to her vibrating phone.

“What are they saying?” he asked. “What, they think _ I _ did that shit?”

Bev nodded. “It looks like it. There’s not a lot of details circulating around. It’s just… One clusterfuck of a mob mentality.”

Richie puffed out a harsh sigh. He petted Stan as the dog ate his dinner. There were footsteps on the stairs, and a rumpled looking Eddie Kaspbrak came around the corner in just a handful of seconds.

Eddie had just gotten off a plane from JFK to LAX that morning. There was a business meeting he had to attend to, and a visit with Myra all within a couple days of each other. But he was home now, and jetlagged to hell, looking exhausted and wrung out. His hair stuck out on odd ends, and one leg of his sweatpants was pushed half way up his calf. He had one of Richie’s tees tucked into the sweatpants. He figured no one knew how big they were on him if he limited the length, but he was wrong, _ oh so very wrong_.

One of the sleeves was supposed to be knotted, but there was barely enough sleeve to accomplish that. In the end, it was safety pinned shut, with the Beverly Marsh stamp of approval on the seams.

He took one look around and frowned, fingers stuck in his hair. “What the fuck’s happening in here?” he asked. “Somebody die?” His smile was twitchy, and there was an underlying fear in his eyes. A plea. _ Tell me there’s nothing wrong this time_.

Richie shook his head. “You’re still stuck with me, Spaghetti,” he declared in a mock-mournful Voice. “Fortunately for _ me_, that means you’re stuck on me, too.” He grinned, and Eddie rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, okay dickbag. But seriously, something happen?”

Bev shrugged, putting her hands up. She put it in Richie’s hands to decide.

Richie sent her a telepathic _ why gee, thanks _, before turning to Eddie with his mouth set in a straight line. He explained the situation to Eddie, joking about how maybe they should just call all the Losers over, and their neighbours, too before he started to tell it all again.

But he told him. He went into the details when Eddie asked him to, replayed and rewound the injustice of it all when Bev burned with a righteous fury. By the time he was done this time around, Eddie was telling Richie to call Mick, his PR manager and get him on board with releasing a statement to smoke all the assholes trying to attack him on just a whim.

“It’ll probably blow over in a few days,” he’d said, but Eddie and Bev’s prodding, and a call from Big Bill had him relenting.

Bill made the drive over within an hour and a half. He was getting ready to leave as he was still on the phone with Richie. Richie half-listened to Bill stuff shirts into a suitcase as he and Bev smoked a cigarette on the back patio.

There was a phone call to Mick, and then one received from Stan (who the _ hell _ knows how he found out about all this shit; the man was practically a dinosaur, so he knew it wasn't from online. Richie had the distinct impression that Eddie caught him up to speed).

By the time Bill was driving through their gate and walking up the driveway, the Losers had all heard of the trouble through the grapevine, and they were workshopping a statement.

Not long, and the four of them, Richie, Bev, Bill and Eddie, found themselves out on the back patio again, with take out and red wine between them all.

Richie stabbed chopsticks into the white paper container and slumped into his chair. “I don’t need this, guys. I don’t need the fucking lawyer language just to clear shit up.”

“Well, R-R-Richie, you can’t mm-make this into a comedy set,” Bill pointed out. “It’s not a bb-b-b_it _.” He sipped his wine, and Richie made a face at him.

“First of all, Billiam, anything can be a bit if you’re talented like me. And second, I didn’t say I was gonna go do an emergency stand-up show. _ Hey, come see Trashmouth Tozier talk about the gays. It’s not the way you think! _ ” He sent a dry look across the table. Eddie kicked his ankle. “ _ Ow _.”

“This is also your coming out,” Bill went on, surprisingly clear.

“Exactly. So I should do it how I want to do it.”

Bev leaned her elbows on the table, the borrowed red plaid rolled well up to her upper arms. “And how’s that, Richie?” she asked. “How do you want to do this?”

He went quiet for a second, not really knowing how to answer that. He took his wineglass and sat back in his chair, arms crossed. “I guess I never really thought about it,” he confessed. “I didn’t really see _ this _ as a thing.”

“Me neither,” Eddie piped up.

Bill made some sort of agreeing noise, like he knew a different, but similar brand of this situation was in the stars for him all along.

“I’ll write the statement,” he decided. He gulped down nearly half his glass and sat straight again.

Eddie burst a laugh. “You can’t even write your own material, genius.”

“Why would I bother writing my own material when I could just dive into the material of your mom’s pants—” Another kick landed right on his ankle. A fuckin bullseye if Richie ever fucking felt one. “_ Ow _!”

“Well beep fuckin’ beep, asshole. _ Jesus _.” Eddie rolled his eyes and put down his chopsticks to reach for his glass.

Bev laughed at them, bright and beautiful, and Bill was right along with her.

She grinned at the two of them, feeling thirteen again, if just for a moment. “So you’ll write it,” she agreed.

Richie nodded. “I’ll call Mick and get the rest of the details sorted, let him read it over before we send it out.”

“Huh-Hope you got another special comin’ s-soon, Rich,” Bill said, a grin plucking at the corners of his mouth. "This is guh-gonna be a helluva storm."

He snorted. “Yeah, _ now _ you fucking want me to make a bit out of it.”

Three rounds of edits, and a whole hour and a half of actual writing the goddamned thing, and Richie had his post. He’d had Stan on speakerphone the entire time. Stan had a weird knack for rousing speeches through the written word. Richie also went to him over Bill just to piss ol' Billiam off as he was locked outside of Richie’s office.

Beverly’s status update texts proved him successful.

“I thought your advice was to keep it short and sweet?” Richie teased at one point.

He could practically hear Stan rolling his eyes all the way across the country. “I’m in the middle of writing my own statement,” he deadpanned. “It goes: Dear Eddie, I’m sorry It knocked you over the head so hard that it made you think you were in love with a big, dumb asshole.”

Richie howled with laughed, throwing himself back against his office chair.

Richie himself didn’t bother with the Instagram posts. As much as he hated the very thought, it was a screenshot embedded into a Tweet. All nice and pretty, with Stan insisting that Richie share the note with him so he could tweak the last bits of it, it was all ready to go.

He had Eddie press send, though. He nearly threw his phone out the window afterwards.

“Here it is, kids.” He poured himself another glass of wine and lifted it high. Bev raised her glass of water, Bill raised a saltine cracker. Eddie scooted himself into the space beside Richie and leaned his head on his shoulder. “Either tonight marks a brand new chapter of my life, or I go back to writing shitty jokes for late night television. Cheers.”

Eddie wrapped his arm around Richie and told him not to be dumb, everything was gonna be fucking fine.

And it was, in the end. The first responses were all shock. Next was the more noticeable negative reactions. There were good ones in between, and Bev read most of them aloud from where she was slumped into one of the den’s chairs, Stan the poodle was sitting dutifully between her legs, loving the occasional pets she gave him.

Bill told Richie he was brave, Eddie said he did good.

By midnight there was a half a dozen tabloid articles about him, all wrapped up in a pretty rainbow. Trashmouth’s a _ gay _, can you believe. It didn’t take long for Bev to pick out one written by a Mr. Aaron Warner, and she thought that was a real treat.

The statement itself was focused on the 2005 incident, Richie’s own coming out, and general shaming of the public for going off such a wild fucking rumor without at least a drop of proper fucking research. Richie’s ex-boyfriend was kept out of the light (God, Richie hadn’t even thought about him in _ years _).

So was Eddie, at least for now. They talked about it beforehand, and they decided that it was best. Eddie was still in the middle of his divorce, after all, and going public, being _ out _… That was a lot of pressure. Sure, it was pressure on Richie, but it would be monumental for Eddie, who never ever signed up for all this.

They’d give it a little while before Richie made the announcement. For now, this worked. They were content, and everything was fair, and most importantly, _ good _.

* * *

> **Richie Tozier**  
**@trashmouth**
> 
> Heterosexuals may own all of my old comedy but from here on out it’s for the gays.

**Author's Note:**

> im slowly beginning to work my way out of writing super niche fics >:)
> 
> here's my [tumblr](https://stansflowercap.tumblr.com/)! you can send me prompts (please send me prompts, im so fucking behind on nano it's killing me)
> 
> don't forget to comment!!


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